


After

by What_we_are



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: End of the World, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Last Men on Earth, Masturbation, Pandemics, Post-Apocalypse, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-09-28 09:46:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20423921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/What_we_are/pseuds/What_we_are
Summary: Mike and Jesse haven't seen another person in months.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the tumblr prompt from bisexualjesse: Mike and Jesse in an abandoned or empty place.

Mike and Jesse walked through the open glass doors of Dillard’s. Their hiking boots left footprints in the dirt and dust. They went side by side, surveying for threats. The dead bodies were old and dried up, not much stink. The manikins didn’t startle them like they would have in the early days. Both men kept their guns holstered. Once they got through the department store, the skylights of the Cottonwood Mall made it easier to see. 

Jesse saw a pile of owl pellets on the dirty tile. He recognized them because of middle school science class when they’d taken the little bones out from the regurgitated fur, feathers, and bits of whatever, and reassembled a mouse’s skeleton with glue on paper.

He wondered for the hundredth time whether mountain lions buried their poop. They’d seen big paw prints, and then four days ago, a Husky carcass. They’d agreed it must have been a mountain lion, come down from the hills, that’d torn it up. Jesse had read an article, or more likely heard something on tv once, about how mountain lions would attack joggers just for fun, just because of how the jogger was bobbing like a cat toy. There were still rabbits and snakes out there for the cougars to eat, but everything had shifted into the city. Maybe the cougars were just following the smaller wild animals. And the pets. 

Mike looked behind them, then tilted his head to the side indicating to Jesse that this was as good a place as any to take a break and drink some water. They shared out of the gallon jug Jesse carried. 

It was good to be out of the direct sun.

“We should sleep here,” Mike said, “maybe lock ourselves in one of the stores.”

Jesse worried about Mike out walking around in the heat so much.

“Sounds good,” he said.


	2. Chapter 2

Jesse looked at the big mall map while Mike rested on the one of the benches. There was a fountain to look at, but it was bone dry. 

The map showed stores with things that were useless: jewelry, toys, and chocolates that would have long since melted and dripped out of their display cases. 

They already had most of what they needed from people’s houses. Jesse carried a camping backpack with a first aid kit, scissors, a crow bar, ammo, food, and water. Water was the big thing: most important and the heaviest. Mike carried a smaller pack with some food and water. He also carried a few crossword books. 

The mall map showed a couple of furniture stores, but they didn’t like sleeping in big open spaces. 

Jesse said, “We could get a mattress from Conn’s Home Plus and drag it over to The Body Shop. I like the way that place smells.” 

Jesse remembered getting Jane some bubble bath there before. It was, like, orange and clove scent, not super feminine. She’d liked it. Jesse let himself remember for a second when they’d taken a bath together. He put the memory away before he started to cry. 

“You okay?” Mike asked. 

“Yeah. I’m okay. How about you? You wanna wait here while I get camp set up.”

“Naw. I can help.”


	3. Chapter 3

Mike pulled down the metal security gate on the soap store and tested the padlock. He didn’t feel the need to tell Jesse that the lock was fine. 

Jesse returned from the back room. “There’s one body in the office back there. Should I move it out?”

“Naw. I don’t even smell it.”

When they’d started out together, they’d always clear out a house. Now they were less squeamish about sharing their sleeping spaces with the dead. Of course, everything had smelled worse then.

They made their way down to the furniture store and picked a queen size mattress that still had the plastic on. 

Jesse said, “We can just slide it.”

“Yeah. I’ll let you go backwards and I’ll get this end.”

It slid pretty easy across the dirty tile floor. Jesse thought about Jane and that time on the new mattress. 

“Kid, there’s no rush here. You wanna talk?”

Jesse stopped walking. “Just thinking about Jane.”

“Yeah. You wanna set this down?”

They leaned the mattress up against a shoe store. A tarantula walked away from them, deeper into the shoe store. 

Jesse babbled. “At least they died fast you know? That’s the only good thing, like, if there was going to be a silver lining to this whole thing, like, at least she didn't suffer. She got it a few days in; we were just waiting for it to get us. And she got the fever, but I didn’t.”

Mike knew all this, of course. “They went easy. Fever dreams and then gone.” Mike had cried in front of Jesse before, but he didn’t want to today. He went to hug the younger man. 

Jesse crumpled into him and they embraced for several minutes. 

“They went easy,” Mike repeated.


	4. Chapter 4

“I know,” Jesse said as he got his tears under control. “I just loved her more than anything.” He wiped his nose on his shirt sleeve. “I wish she was here. I wish your daughter-in-law and granddaughter were here.” Then he took it a step back. “I wish none of this shit had happened. I mean what if it was a regular day and I was here getting new kicks and you were here lookin’ for old man pants, or whatever.”

Mike smiled. “I wish we were. No offense, of course, but if I had a choice, I’d much prefer the world where we never meet.”

Jesse smiled even though he was still crying a little.

Mike patted him on the shoulder.

They finished dragging the mattress to their temporary camp and flopped it down. 

Mike said, “I’m gonna scrounge up some blankets and look around. I’ll be gone an hour?”

“Cool. An hour’s cool.”

They both looked at their watches with the understanding that if Mike wasn’t back then, Jesse would come looking for him.


	5. Chapter 5

Jesse sat on the bed and cried some more. 

All the soaps, body washes, creams, body sprays, and crap were dusty. He picked a vanilla lotion and went in the employee bathroom. 

He had to walk past the dead guy to get there, but he didn’t look. 

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and decided that after he was done he’d shave and cut his hair. 

He unzipped his pants and started thinking about his first time with Jane. She had unzipped the cumbersome sleeping bag and spread it out so they could be under something, which meant they had to bare-ass it on the hardwood. She was a little shy that first time. She wanted him on top and the sleeping bag over them. It occurred to Jesse, there in that bathroom, that this was probably because he didn’t have any curtains yet.

He felt dumb. And sad. And horny. 

Jesse applied a lot of lotion to his dick and started stroking. He didn’t want to take a long time; he just wanted a release – a break from this heartbreaking new world. He stroked slowly at first and pinched his nipple with his other hand. He held himself loosely and went fast. He thought about Jane’s voice when she came. One time she’d sat on his face and rocked and rocked against his tongue until she came so loudly he'd worried the neighbors would hear. Jesse got some toilet paper and caught what spurted out of him. He leaned against the door and shut his eyes. After a second he put the toilet paper in the garbage and went to find his razor and a good shaving cream.


	6. Chapter 6

Mike came back exactly on time, with two big shopping bags. 

“Lookin’ sharp,” he said.

Jesse answered, “Yeah? I feel better when I shave.”

“You want help with your hair. It’s pretty choppy.”

“Nobody has to see it but you, so I think I’m okay.”

“Fair enough. You wanna go to bed soon?” Mike got out a comforter, a set of sheets, and two pillows. “I got batteries for the flashlights, too.” 

“Cool. Were we running low?”

“I don’t know. I just like having ‘em.”

“We could light up a candle.”

“Alright.” 

Jesse lit a sage scented candle and got out his knife to take the plastic off the mattress. “So did you see anything cool?” he asked. 

“Not really. I like malls better when they have bookstores.” 

Mike made the bed.

“Did you drink more water?” Jesse asked.

Mike shook his head slightly, “I get dizzy one time and you think I need a hospice nurse.”

“You fainted.”

“I passed out,” Mike corrected. “Women faint. I just got dehydrated. That’s all. Besides, that was weeks ago.”

“It was, like, five days ago.”

Mike furrowed his brow. “Ya think? Seems like longer.”

Jesse took off his gun and holster and put them on the counter next to the register. 

Mike put his next to the bed. He pulled down the security gate and moved the padlock to the inside. After he locked it, he said, “I’m putting the key up here by the . . . whatever. Right here though.”

Jesse was intrigued that Mike considered somebody coming by and locking them in. 

They both slept in undershirts and boxer shorts. It was too hot for the comforter, but not too hot to hold each other a little bit. Neither of them liked to sleep all tangled up together, but they liked to cuddle for a while before nodding off. They had the habit of talking about their lives before the plague and what their next move should be. 

They had tried settling at Mike’s house for a while, but it got boring. Then they had tried living in a mansion, but that got boring too. 

Jesse snuggled into Mike’s shoulder. He said, “We have to get to a cooler climate. Just getting a little air conditioning from cars and houses with generators isn’t gonna cut it forever. Gas gets old and doesn’t work.”

“You worry too much. We can find open roads and make it north somewhere. We’ve got a year before the gas goes bad. Gas in a lawnmower goes bad after a year, right?”

Jesse answered sleepily, “Fuck if I know.”


	7. Chapter 7

They came across a nice RV right outside the mall parking lot. It was not like the shitty Bounder that Jesse and Mr. White had cooked in. It was bigger and nicer, almost like something a rock star would tour in.

It was out on the jam-packed bypass road, sitting there with the driver’s side door open. 

“Air conditioning,” they said at the same time. 

Jesse set down his pack and got up in the RV’s driver’s seat. When he turned the key the engine turned over and the gas gauge arrow pointed up to halfway. 

“Sweet,” he said under his breath. 

He glanced out at Mike who was taking a piss in the other direction. 

Jesse turned on the AC and explored the RV. It had nice built in furniture, a big TV, a mini kitchen, and a bedroom in the back. There were boxes on the couch and covering the floor. Jesse looked in one and saw photo albums. Another had canned food in it.

Whoever had packed this up had had the good manners to go and die somewhere else. There were kid’s clothes and toys and stuff. Jesse didn’t sleep well when there were kids or kid’s stuff around. He just got too fuckin’ sad. He closed the kid box and took it out the side door. That shit was upsetting to him and he wasn't even the one who'd lost a grand-kid in this whole thing. 

Mike got in the driver’s seat and enjoyed the AC while Jesse unpacked their new camp. Jesse set all the stuff on the road without knowing what was in the boxes and garbage bags. There were two boxes of food in the camper and that’s all he needed to know.

Mike turned his head and said to him, “It’s gonna get cooler tonight.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna make soup. Do they have spices and stuff?”

Jesse opened the little kitchen cupboards. “Yeah.” 

Mike made his way to the back and took a look at the mini spice rack in the cupboard. Then he perused the contents of the other cupboards and the boxes. 

“These people were too fancy for their own good,” he complained. “What the fuck is a quinoa?”

Jesse shrugged. 

Mike said, “Looks like a cross between nothing and rice. Says here, it’s good for you.”

“Couldn’t hurt right?”

“I’ll put it in the soup. And we’ve already got canned chicken, and they’ve got canned green beans. What about these capers?”

“What about _what_?” Jesse asked back.

“What about capers in the soup. They’re salty.”

“You’re the chef, man. Whatever you wanna throw in there, I’ll eat it.”

Mike did some crossword puzzles and read a Michael Crichton book that had been in the RV. Jesse poked around in people’s cars and jacked off at a respectable distance from the camp. In the afternoon, when it got hot, he sat with Mike and drew a little bit on the fold down table inside the air-conditioned RV. 

That evening, Mike let the soup simmer for an hour, so they’d get hungry and it would taste better. 

“This is good, yo.” Jesse said after he’d had a bite. “I want to make some baked potato soup. Guess we better settle down somewhere and plant some potato seeds.” Jesse smiled. 

Mike smiled back at him. “There are canned small potatoes.”

“Oh, yeah? I wanna put them with a jar of nacho cheese and maybe some dried onions or those little green dried onions. Serve it with sour cream and onion potato chips.”

Mike got serious, “We should settle though, all these foods will go bad eventually.”

“We’ve got time.”

They used all the blankets from the storage under the couch seat and layered them up on the bed like the princess and the pea. 

Mike took a swig of some old whiskey he’d found. He held it out to Jesse. 

Jesse took a swig. “Smooth,” he said. 

“It ought to be; its seventy-five years old. These people were living well.”

“Wonder where they died?”

“Probably by the side of the road, trying to walk out of the city.”

“I kinda like staying in Albuquerque,” Jesse admitted. 

“I do to. I like being near Kaylee’s grave.”

Jesse nodded. He wanted to say something comforting, but there was a loud cry outside the RV. It sounded like a cat but also like a vicious alien. 

Both men reached for their guns.

“You lock the doors? Mike asked.

Jesse’s voice was quiet, “Yeah, but I doubt cougar’s got pose-able thumbs anyway.”

There was a sniffing at the side door. 

They pointed their weapons at it and held their breath.

The sniffing went on, then there was a grunt and then silence. 

After a minute they lowered their pistols. 

“They’re supposed to eat deer,” Mike said.

“Well, go out there and tell her.”


End file.
